New Page on this site: My Way of Life

I just added a new page to this site describing the way I try to live my life or want to live my life or am living my life.  Go up to the “pages” part of the blog (in its current format, these are the tabs at the top of the page) and there is my My Way of Life page.

Here’s part of what’s on it:

I am different.

They say everyone is unique.  I have a history of being persecuted because I am different.  Either I stand out in a crowd or others find reason to single me out for a difference that is merely perceived.  Over the years, I have made efforts to blend in and be like everyone else.  I did this in order to avoid being teased, bullied, discriminated against, excluded, labeled, stereotyped, imprisoned, censored, brainwashed, enslaved, and assaulted by my peers.

I am considered to be very short in stature.  I walk with my feet turned out slightly, and carry myself a certain way,  mostly because of the way my body is made, but also to avoid falling and out of habit.   For this reason many people have said they can spot me from afar.  As a child I was considered to be a poor athlete because I ran slowly, had difficulty hitting a ball with a bat, and when I tried to kick a soccer ball, I missed.

From the beginning, I always spoke much more slowly than others.   This made me appear unintelligent, and I found difficulty asserting myself because my speech was slow.  It is easy to interrupt me mid-sentence.  In my thirties, my speech became slurred because of certain medications I took, but this was a temporary condition.   Over the past year my way of speaking has changed dramatically.  This is most likely connected to the vocal tic I developed.

For whatever reason, I was born with far above average intelligence, for which I was persecuted.  All my life, I tried to hide my intelligence, disguise it, lie about it, or eradicate it to be like other people.

The way I think is different from the way most people think.  My father recognized this in me when I was very young.  He wondered if I would become a great scientist.  When I told him I preferred to compose music, he was disappointed at first, but then accepted my wish.  At school, teachers observed that I day dreamed often, and noticed that I thought differently from others.  Some disciplined me, some sent me to the guidance counselor or sent notices home to my parents, but many teachers enjoyed talking to me.

I tried to dress in clothing that was like other people’s clothing.  I tried to act confident during times that I was pretending I was someone I was not, but it was difficult.  Every time that I have held a position of employment, I felt like a fake.  It was extremely difficult to keep up the act.  I tried desperately to fit in, and was usually fired because my efforts failed.  I am not surprised that at the few jobs I held, I wore make-up on my face.  Make-up is not becoming on me.  This act of “doing one’s face,” which comes naturally to many, was for me an act of desperation.

Because I was persecuted for being different, I learned to hide myself and keep secrets.  When the pain became too much, I turned to the mental health system.  The mental health system tried to fix my pain by making me more normal.  Mostly, they tried to change my thinking, which they considered “sick,” by doing therapy on me and giving me pills.  The mental health system often uses the word “normalize.”  Now, I understand why.

In the process of all the efforts to make me just like everyone else, the mental health system, its institutions and personnel teased me, bullied me, and discriminated against me.  I was labeled, stereotyped, imprisoned, censored, brainwashed, enslaved, and assaulted.  I was often excluded from care because I had become poor, and also because I had grown older and more worn out.  Eventually, I excluded myself, and declared myself free of the system.

Today, I enjoy being different.  I don’t want to be like everyone else.  One drawback to not hiding or disguising my difference is that I face severe discrimination on a daily basis.  Most people don’t want to associate with me because of who I am.  I try to accept this, and move on.

I’m home and have finally turned on the computer

Hi everyone!  Wow!  I’m home!  Whew!  What a day!  Sorry I was “absent” for a few days.  It couldn’t be helped.  That was something beyond my control.  They asked me not to blog…so I didn’t blog.

I can only speculate on this and I won’t do so at the moment but I will get back to this issue on “blogging while inpatient” eventually…it is not what I want to focus on right now.

These were the highlights of my hospitalization….

First of all, I got there.  Well, no, let me back up.

First of all, I lived long enough to make it there on Wednesday.  I wasn’t sure that this would happen, and I’m damn lucky that it did.  When I walked into the Admissions Office, carrying a knapsack and a canvas shopping bag I could sort of keep my balance and sort of stand up.  What I thought in my head…let me say I wasn’t really thinking.  Thoughts happened and they were in my head but you couldn’t really call that thinking.  I guess in two weeks I’d “eaten” once and that had been a week previously.  Since then, no calories.  I overheard people saying I was “confused and disoriented” but this didn’t register with me.   My voice was hoarse for a few days and I only spoke in my normal voice (the one I usually have) for a few seconds following a glass of water, then I returned to a hoarse voice again.  But my dry, dry lips improved rapidly after only 24 hours.

In the first couple of days, it was animal instinct that drove me.  A few bites at each meal and that was it.  Not hunger really.  Just animal instinct for survival.  I drank sips of juice and ate bites as my body could absorb teensy crumbs of this and that.  This was Wednesday that I came to the Admissions Office.  By Saturday,  I was able to eat the full tray, slowly, but it would make me extremely uncomfortable, and my body was not okay with doing this meal after meal every few hours and also doing snacks, too, as you can imagine.

To reverse the body’s tendency to lose weight or maintain a very low weight, some people have to eat a very, very large amount of food.  Some people.  Not others.  It varies tremendously.   I learned quickly that it was to a patient’s peril to look on another’s tray and “compare” amounts and types of food and “calories.”  Some people’s trays were so loaded with food that you’d think it was enough to feed a family.  Other people were fed three or four items and that was it.  It was just plain dumb to try to analyze it or say that such and such person’s metabolism blah blah blah…everyone’s body is different and it’s all science and none of my business what happened in everyone else’s past experience with their body and how much they weigh and need to gain or not gain or how much they are eating off their tray (or doing whatever with afterward, though staff are rather mindful of this kind of “behavior” nowadays).

They have this “percent” thing.  The goal is to eat “one hundred percent” of your tray.  If you do this for twenty-four hours, you get some privilege.  I think this is that you get to go on fresh air break.  It’s incentive.  I think you have to do 100% for three days straight to get a Green Band, which is this huge deal reward because then they don’t go peek at your piss after you go to the bathroom every time you go.  The bathrooms are kept locked anyway, but they won’t peek if you have a Green Band.

I never got fresh air privileges and I never got a Green Band.  I never really wanted either enough to find it worth it to stuff myself to that extent.  I don’t like to go outdoors while I’m inpatient.  Never have.  To me, it’s fake freedom.  Supervised.  Like I’m in kindergarten or something.  Kid on a playground that has to be monitored.  It royally sucks, actually.  I’d rather wait, and I did, and today when I got out I knew it was totally worth the wait.

As for the Green Band, hey, piss is yellow.  Piss is piss and shit is shit.  There are variations here and there but those nurses and counselors have seen it all.  Mine is not going to surprise them in the least and they will not post on Facebook what mine looks like or talk about it on their dinner breaks.  I’m sure they hated looking at piss and shit as much as we hated their looking at ours.

I’m going to do a lot of talking about what it means to tell it like it is in the coming week while talking about my experience at Alcott, by the way.  It is very important to see this illness for what it is and not beat around the bush and avoid talking about the fact that people die from it for fear of “triggering” people.  Everyone should read the statistics.  You deserve to know the facts about this illness.  No one should hide facts from you to keep you from getting “upset” because knowledge is actually power.  Knowing these facts is very often a very important catalyst.   If someone is withholding knowledge from you (about medical facts or facts about medications or medical procedures, etc) then you are suffering under oppression.  I am quite serious about this.  Learn about your illness.  Do it on your own.  Read greedily and hungrily.  And encourage others to do so as well, including your family and friends.

Okay, I have rambled.  Back to 100%.  I generally didn’t eat everything on my tray.   There is a lot to be said about the concept of “100%” and what it means and why people do it.  I wrote a lot on this.  One of the things that I said (I will probably go look it up and find the exact quote at some point) is that first of all while I was there I made a point of focusing on my own tray and no one else’s.  I was fastidious about this.  I think this was one of the most positive choices I made while there, to focus on my own actual food that I had in front of me.  One thing I didn’t write about but had in my head was that the tray itself had a physical boundary.  It was rectangular and was kind of a boundary of me and separated me safely from the others at my table.  I generally kept all the dishes inside the rectangle to keep them “safe.”

I have just looked at the time and it’s late.  You know, before when I used to blog, I would go on and on and on, and insist on getting to some sort of “conclusion” to my article and it would get ridiculously late in the night.

Let me contest this, because first of all, I have barely begun to get going with all this talk about my treatment here and could go on and on for hours tonight with you all!  I am so happy to be back here!  I could sit here and write forever and ever!  But listen: I need sleep.  That was one thing I didn’t get while I was there.  Not one night of decent sleep.  I’m talking bad, bad, bad sleep night after night, not because of anxiety or anything wrong with me per se, but because of practicalities…bad luck mostly.  I expect to sleep tonight.

 

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME

I am setting this to post at 7:21am…though I may be in the shower….

I woke up alive this morning.  I am okay.

I have not double-checked my birth certificate but I believe that 7:21 is the time of my birth.  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, in a snowstorm.

Actually, I was not out in the snow.  I was indoors, inside a hospital.  I do not know the name of the hospital.

I assume my mother was there.

I am in a really negative space this morning on the day before my 54th birthday. Sorry.

I wish this wasn’t the case.  But it is.

I woke up alive.  I was glad to get adequate sleep.  About 7-1/2 hours.  Nice.  I slept rather late.  I had dreams.  I don’t remember them now.  I felt scattered in my thoughts this morning but eventually I got focused and into a very angry space.  Then, I decided I’d better get a move on and get on with my day, take a shower, get dressed, and so on, get Puzzle out, as it was really well into the morning.  I found that my anger was morphing into despair.  Then I interrupted myself and came here.  I decided I’d write about what I was feeling.  Here I am.

I’ve been posting on Facebook lately.  This is highly unusual for me.  Just using it as an outlet, expressing myself, reaching out, as my birthday approaches…what the heck.  Mostly my Goddard classmates are on there.  Excellent folks.  Many are on Pacific Time.  Things happen late at night.

I awoke this morning wearing my pajamas.  Well, this makes sense because I went to sleep wearing my pajamas, and I didn’t take them off in the middle of the night.   I have these bright red fleece footie pajamas.  I took them off when I went to pee when I got up.  I wished and wished and crossed my fingers that the edema that I’ve had for days and days now had disappeared in the night.  This sometimes happens.  Well, fat chance.  It didn’t.  I have the ankles of an elephant.  Still.   My skin is so stretched that I have these terrible sores and I had to put lotion on last night to keep them from getting worse.  If you have never had anorexia you don’t know how terrible this makes me feel inside, to have legs, or at least calves, as if I am about fifty pounds heavier than I really am.  Well, forty.  Sucks just as much.  My body is betraying me.  When all this edema stuff suddenly started at the end of last April, I really thought that my body was ruined and that my life was over.  I died, really, a long, long time ago.  I am not the person I was.  The world has not been the same.  It is a cruel, cruel place.

I must slink around at this point. I must avoid hospitalization at all costs.  I am terrified.  This is an unrealistic fear but it is a fear nonetheless simply because it is always a possibility due to the fact that I am a mental patient and people have their prejudices.  I see my therapist on Monday.  I wrote January 8 on my calendar, the day of my 54th birthday, and I wrote, “Happy Birthday.”  The next page was blank for a very long time.  I guess it was yesterday that I noticed its blankness.  I wrote in the date, January 9th, and I wrote in that I see my T that day.

On Sunday, I will be 54, and I will still be 54 on Monday.  So when I go to see my T, I will be 54.

I don’t know what I was getting at.  Well, I do know.  Hospital means nut ward.  Nut ward means state hospital.  State hospital means absolutely no eating disorders treatment whatsoever and staff who have absolutely no knowledge of eating disorders.  Actually, the staff in state hospitals probably are completely uneducated and possibly don’t even have high school diplomas and most likely barely speak English.  State hospital means sitting around all day every day in a wobbly chair surrounded by other patients who can barely put a sentence together.  Maybe I’ll take up smoking again.  It might be the only activity they offer.

My life.  What’s left of it.

Avoid hospital.  Be free.

Things left: Puzzle.  Church.  I’ve got a few friends, God bless them, but most have left me.  Not that I blame them.  I blame some of them, though.

I am really, really blessed to have my church.  I am blessed to have what I have left.

I am blessed to have my writing.  I have been writing a lot lately.  It is necessary.

Now, I will take a shower.  It is late.

I hope the shower is hot.  I have my showers, too.  I do have a lot left.  A fair amount.  Today.  All day today.  All day Sunday, January 8th, my birthday, when I will show up at church a bit before 10:30, in time for the service.

The weather is supposed to be nice here in Boston.  Quite fitting, I think.

I am resigned to the fact that my anorexia isn’t going to go away anytime soon

I am resigned to the fact that my anorexia isn’t going to go away anytime soon.  Or should I say I am resigned to the fact that my anorexia most likely won’t ever go away.  Or mostly, I realized today the fear I have in my heart that my anorexia will kill me.  And although this emotion, which I’ve felt before in various forms, hasn’t always been sadness, I have felt sad all day.

Walking Puzzle is generally a joyful activity for me.  I can feel incredibly high while I’m in synch with my dog and we’re zooming down the sidewalks at top speed every morning and evening.  I get out before the dreaded vertigo starts, before the drudge of the day begins.  The vertigo wears off in the afternoon, and is gone by her afternoon walk, but I’m often not up to snuff for that walk.  It depends.  But the mornings are awesome.

This morning, however, was different.  I was listening to Evanescence.  This was not the best music to have on, it turned out, because it was what I listened to at the time that I was raped in 2008.  Whether I wanted it or not, I was brought back to this time, the time that the germ of my relapse was implanted into me, if you will, and life was never the same after that–I was dirty, contaminated, damaged goods.

I thought of my character in my novel, I am So Cold, and Hungry in My Soul, May, who tosses out her clothing after she is raped.  I did the same damned thing.  I scrubbed myself over and over in the shower to cleanse myself of the horror of the deed.

So I was thinking these things, walking Puzzle, just getting sadder and sadder about my life, while Aimee Lee sang the songs, “Lithium,” and “Lacrymosa.”  The music pushes and pulls against itself and twists and turns.  Her voice is full of turmoil.

You couldn’t say what I felt was turmoil this morning.  Just sadness, a deepening feeling that my life isn’t going to go on the way it would if I didn’t have anorexia, that I am already past the edge, and I am falling, falling into an abyss that I can’t get out of.  I see all the Fourth of July celebration around me and this makes me feel even sadder.

Last year, I walked past barbecues and drooled because I was so starved.  I am starved this July as well.  Now, though, I think the smell of burgers would make me gag.  I haven’t smelled any, though.  Guess I instinctively avoid big yards with  grills and picnic tables and toys and coolers full of beer of all types, and bags of chips, bags of corn-0n-the-cob, bags of burger patties, hot dogs, paper plates, cups, punch, coke, burger rolls, pickles, ketchup, mustard, spatula and tongs, and charcoal and lighter fluid.  Guess it’s any trace of family, friends, and celebration that I avoid.  Or should I say, someone else’s family, friends, and celebration.  I don’t want to see it, smell it, or taste it.

Yesterday, I went to a Staples store and shopped up a storm.  I put it all on my credit card.  I had coupons and a Staples card.  I carried it all home in my rolling backpack.  I bought mechanical pencils, two little boxes to keep things in, a three-ring binder, a little notepad, ink for my printer, a pencil box, a box nicely shaped for knitting needles, wipes for the computer monitor, and a box for 4×6 note cards.  I stopped at Petco for necessary dog toothpaste, three tubes of it, and three toothbrushes for Puzzle.  I bought a bunch of produce.  And this morning, after Puzzle’s walk, I was at it again, online, at Staples.com.  I went to CVS this afternoon and got two bottles of mouthwash, two thingies of soap, and dental floss.  I’m all set for financial ruin.

It was a comfort to me to have these little things.  To be a hunger-gatherer in this big, scary world.  Yesterday when I came home from my big shopping spree, I went on another spree: I cooked.  I cooked a zillion things that I didn’t eat.  I put things in tiny containers and labeled each container.  I think I spent three hours doing this.  Afterward, my apartment smelled of onion and peppers.  Everything I cooked was made only of vegetables.  When I chopped and stir-fried the onions, I cried.

As time goes on, I am becoming so organized, so compartmentalized.  I write down everything that I’m going to do for the day, and then I do it.  I write these things on a spreadsheet.  I write down everything I eat.  After the day is over, I print out the spreadsheet.  I write down how well I starved myself.  Of course, there’s a special place on the spreadsheet where I write my weight.  I thought about this, and I thought about the boxes I bought, and I thought about the databank watch I’ve owned for years, and I thought about the pop-up reminders I’ve set up on my computer for everything, and the labels in my refrigerator, everything organized, the post-its telling me exactly what to do, the way I get upset if I don’t follow my routine perfectly, how I eat what “normals” wouldn’t call meals but I do at the same time every day….This is getting damned scary.

Who am I becoming?  I think about my anorexia all the time.  I think about it from the moment I get up until the moment I go to sleep.  I thought about it the entire time I was walking to CVS today, and during the time I was shopping at CVS, and for the entire walk home.  I think of it while talking to people.  I even think about it during my joyful walks with Puzzle.  It never, ever leaves me alone.

I don’t remember this happening in all the years that I have had this illness.  I remember forgetting about it and thinking about my studies. I remember, even during this relapse, thinking about my thesis.  Now, I am lost, buried in it, and I can’t get out.

I am afraid that I will blurt it out.  I was afraid that I would tell the pharmacy person, while paying for my prescription today, “I am anorexic.”  I was afraid that I would lose control and say this.  I held my lips tightly shut.

When I see my T on Wednesday, I will tell her about this writing.  Maybe I will read some of it to her (not all of it–or should I say I won’t read the majority of it).  I will tell her that I am going to die of this disease and that I may not make it to my next birthday.  Of course I don’t know this.  No one knows.  But it is her job to disagree with me.  It is her job to not let me die or resign myself to dying.  It is her job to help me find the will to live.  It is her job to help me find a way out.  I wish she wasn’t going to bother trying, though.  It isn’t worth it.  I am too far gone.

So I will see her  Wednesday, and tomorrow is the Fourth of July, and the next day is the fifth, and then Wednesday.  It seems far off because she’s been on vacation.  She’s been on vacation and I have lost weight.  Guess when the cat’s away, the mouse will play.  On a treadmill going nowhere.

I have taught myself continental knitting…at last…no more need for the “Julie method”….

I don’t know what happened.  I’ve been wanting to learn Continental knitting for a while now.  Suddenly, I can do it!  I’ve been using the “Julie method,” which I invented, for years, because I knew no other way.  The “Julie method” is slow, but I make very few if any errors.  Like Continental, I hold the yarn in my left hand.

About an hour ago, my hands started doing Continental knitting.  Just like that.   I’ve been trying to do this for years.  Right now, I’m working on the ribbing for a hat.  So I’m doing K1P1 in Continental.  I’m using two strands of yarn at the same time.  You’d think this would be really, really challenging for a beginning knitter in Continental.  It is.  But I’m doing it.

I have never been able to do the “conventional” method of knitting that is done in the US, called the “British” or “English” method, I forget which.  It is also called “throwing.”  For this method, you hold the yarn in your right hand.  To me, that seems…well, backwards!  People watch me knit and go cross-eyed.

People look at me cross-eyed, anyway.  I know I look like a freak, zooming around Watertown with Puzzle, who herself looks like a freak right now with her scraggly fur (she needs a groom).  I am just a crazy skinny girl walking a little scruffy white dog a mile a minute around town, blasting the headphones, paying attention to no one (including traffic).  Sometimes, she and the dog wear matching knitted outfits.  Crazy.  You wonder what she is laughing about.  You wonder what she is talking to herself about.  You wonder why tears are in her eyes.  But she keeps on zooming with that crazy dog, that happy little dog, telling her not to pee on the flowers, but that darned dog pees on them anyway, just like a boy dog.

Yep, that crazy girl has a secret today.  Wow.  Wow wow wow.  She can do CONTINENTAL KNITTING.  What a treat.

Update: News About Me

Last night I cut my dose of Trilptal in half, from 300 mgs each night to 150.  My doctor still doesn’t know that I cut it from 600 to 300 in March.  I cut it down further because of the return of the “swaying” a few days ago.  I plan to get off Trileptal in a few days, or maybe week.  I don’t see any point in taking 150 mgs, because that I know of, it is not a therapeutic dose.  I could be wrong about this.  Don’t take my word for it.  I feel okay about this because I am also on two other anticonvulsants, Lamictal and Topamax.  I take all these three medications for mood stabilization.  They also help me with bingeing (that is, an eating binge).  I found that the Trileptal lost its anti-binge properties after maybe six weeks after I started taking it, though initially it was quite effective.  Mood stabilizers are the only medication that help me with bingeing.

Right now, I am working on not bingeing by behavior techniques, and my special friend Frank has been very supportive and helpful to me.  We have hopes that I can stop bingeing, at least for a long, long time.  After I have not binged for 21 days, we are going to have a binge party!  We are going to binge together–on nothing!  We are so excited about this celebration!  Of course, I have no clue as to whether I will be able to do 21 days, so we are taking it one day at a time.  I am celebrating x days today.  This morning, I am listening to a Daughtry CD that I borrowed from the library, and celebrating.  I have never heard Daughtry before, because I don’t listen to the radio, but I understand he’s quite popular these days.

I will probably not keep you posted on my progress.  It will be too embarrassing if I screw up.

Today I will meet my case manager from the Department of Mental Health for the first time.  This will be mainly yet another intake meeting–the third.  We are meeting with the director at my home.

After that, I am seeing an orthopedist about my knee.  It is time.  It’s been three weeks now that I have not been able to walk 1) without pain, and 2) without a mobility aid (crutches or cane).  Frequently, I have pain even when I am off my feet.  I have spent little time outside my home.  I have been miserable because of this injury.  I can no longer do this alone.  I need specialized, professional help with it.  I got an appointment very quickly.

As to my anorexia…I am still restricting…eating mostly vegetables….My weight is dropping…again….

I still have edema and I hate it.  But it is lessening.  Today I said to myself, “Fuck it.  It is going to be hot out. I’m wearing shorts.”

I have developed these incredible upper body muscles from using crutches.  Forgive me for boasting, but last time I was at the gym, I was nearly able to lift my entire body off the floor using the triceps pull.  My muscles are larger now (muscles really show when you are very skinny) and I am absolutely positive that I can lift myself off the floor entirely now.  Next time, I’ll give it a try when nobody’s looking.  Of course, I’ll take the pin out of the resistance thingy after I’m done!

I still get vertigo. I get it about 75% of the time–that is, I get it ten minutes after the first morsel of food I put in my mouth in the morning, and it lasts for several hours, 75% of days.  There seems to be no pattern.  On Sunday, it lasted all day.  I swear I am not making this up.  I know it comes from my anorexia.

I have been keeping Microsoft Excel charts of my food.  I have been doing this obsessively.  I spend hours at it.  I print them out at the end of the day.  These are secret charts that I plan on showing no one.  I think the only good thing about it is that I am learning Excel!  More on this later.  I intend on writing an entire entry discussing these charts.

Okay, enough.  Have a nice day.

My running is improving

I ran five miles again today.  It wasn’t hard.  It very well may have been 5.25.  When I got to three laps, there was a possibility that it may only have been two, so I added a lap at the end, making the total 21, or possibly 20, depending.

Life is good.  The weather is fabulous.

I am getting stronger.
I can run faster.
I can run farther.
My weight is improving.
My eating is improving.
I am taking better care of myself.
I have a life filled with love and goodness.
I look to the future with hope in my eyes, and joy in my heart.

Frank and I will have our cupcake party soon.  And celebrate.  I have a lot to be thankful for.

Happy Easter

Party!

Frank and I are having a party.  We are having cupcakes.  He is baking his chocolate cupcakes from a mix at his place on Maui, and I am buying a chocolate cupcake from Kick Ass Cupcakes in Davis Square, Somerville, MA. I will bring the cupcake home, and then we will eat our cupcakes together at our respective homes.

Frank has always wanted me to eat chocolate cake when I celebrate something.  He had suggested it for my birthday, but that didn’t happen.  I was in McLean Hospital on my birthday this past January.  My birthday sucked.  Even the staff at McLean forgot to get me a cake.  Not that I would have eaten any.  Actually, when they finally remembered the cake, days later…nope…I didn’t eat any.  And no, it wasn’t chocolate, not that that would have made a difference.  I have spent a number of birthdays in hospitals.

But now, we are celebrating something new and special: Frank is legally changing his name.  He is keeping Frank and changing his middle and last names.  The name change should go through very soon, and when it does, we will have the name-change cupcake party.

It is also the beginning of spring, of rebirth.  Snow is melting, and in case you were wondering: yes, it does snow in Hawaii.  Even though it hasn’t dipped under freezing very much lately, we still have a huge pile of snow back in the patio where I can see it from my living room window.  What a view.  It will take till mid-May to melt it all.  But now, the time of the name-change, can be the starting point of this melting.

It is the time to welcome in a new, fresh way of seeing the world, to cast off old ways, and to step into the sun.  It is the time to be strong and healthy.  It is the time to run like we’ve never run before, whether the wind is behind us or against us, because it is always within us.  It is the time that our age will not stop us from living our lives.  It is the time to be happy.

I am not going to worry about how many calories are in the cupcake.  I will set my eating disorder aside.  I will set aside all negativity I have around “junk food.”  There is no “junk food.”  There is good food out there.  There is food in every flavor you can imagine, some food in interesting shapes, food wrapped up in boxes, food with candles, food with funny names you can’t pronounce, food you drink or slurp, food that melts in your mouth, and food that melts everywhere and gets all over your clothes and makes you laugh.

So why should “fattening” come into the picture?  What creep invented the fact that if you eat certain foods in certain quantities, you will “gain weight” and “get fat”?  What a concept!  It is time to change the name of “Diet” to “Die.”  Let’s just kill it, okay?  Maybe we should change “Weigh In” to “No Way In.”  Because very, very soon I’m going to barge my way into Kick Ass Cupcakes and buy that chocolate cupcake and bring it home and eat it with Frank.  And we are going to have a grand celebration.